


Sugar And Spice And All Things Nice

by lindsey_grissom



Series: Lizzie ‘Verse [4]
Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: F/M, canon AU, five times fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-08
Updated: 2018-03-08
Packaged: 2019-03-28 15:12:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13906686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lindsey_grissom/pseuds/lindsey_grissom
Summary: Mr and Mrs Carson try to spend some private moments alone but find themselves constantly interrupted.





	Sugar And Spice And All Things Nice

**i.**

  
“Is that the last of them?” Charles looks over at his wife { _his wife_ }, waits for her nod as she checks the guest book before he locks the doors. “Well then, that’s another day over.”

  
Elsie smiles, holds her hand out for the key. 

  
“Mmm. Busy.” She clips the key to her waist and he reaches out to rattle its chain, watches it settle against her skirts.

When he looks up she has an eyebrow raised, a light flush on her cheeks. 

  
“I suppose you’re tired, Mrs Carson?” He reaches out again, this time for her waist, his fingers splayed against her back, thumbs stroking circles at her hips.

  
He pulls her closer, still amazed each time that she lets him.  

  
“Not _so_ tired, Mr Carson." 

  
He leans down as her arms slide up his chest, hands curling over his shoulders. 

  
His lips press against hers for just a moment, two; before he feels something tugging at the hem of his jacket. "Aunt Elsie, Uncle Carson.”

  
He pulls back, lets Elsie step back too. “You should be asleep.”

  
Elizabeth blinks up at him, one curled fist rubbing at her eye. “Can’t sleep.”

  
With a quick look to his wife, he bends and lifts the girl into his arms. “Have you tried counting?”

  
She nods against his chest, tucking her head in beneath his chin. “Sheep and dogs and forks.”

  
Elsie laughs beside him, leaning her head into his arm as she peers at her niece. “Forks?”

  
“Uncle Carson taught me." 

  
He grins sheepishly. "She came by while I was counting the silver.”

  
Elsie’s hand grips his at his side, squeezes. “And it didn’t work?”

  
Elizabeth shakes her head. “Want to sleep with you." 

  
Their eyes meet again over the girl’s head and he gives Elsie a little nod. "Okay, Lizzie. Just for tonight.”

  
It will not be just the one night of course, tonight already the third since they moved into the property that the girl has come to ask to sleep with them. 

  
Elizabeth yawns, mirrored by her aunt and he gives a small resigned sigh. Perhaps tomorrow night he’ll get to hold the other one of his girls this close.

—–

**ii.**

“Your tea.” Elsie looks up as Charles holds out the small china cup.

  
“You didn’t have to do that.” She would have made him a cup if he had asked. The accounts are not so interesting that she would have minded the interruption. 

  
“I know.” He sits down on the settee beside her, close enough that their sides touch, shoulder to knee.

With the tea in hand she closes the notebook, drops both pen and book to the small table beside her.

  
The tea is perfect, just cool enough to drink and carefully she allows herself to lean into him as she sips.

  
He switches his cup from one hand to the other and wraps his arm around her shoulder. 

  
They can hear Elizabeth in her room, talking to her dolls and bears. “She’s playing guest house again.” He says.

  
“I’m surprised she hasn’t roped you into helping the guests settle again.” She smirks behind her cup. “Making their beds, taking their laundry away.”

  
He sniffs, and from the corner of her eye she sees the way he raises his chin. “I was a fine maid, I’ll have you know.”

  
She giggles, hardly avoids snorting into her tea. “I’ll remember that.” She says when she has calmed down. “Next time I need a little extra help with the beds, I’ll know where to find you.”

  
He grumbles and she is distracted, doesn’t notice at first how his hand moves along her shoulder, curls around her neck. He presses gently, turns her head to face him.

  
“You’ve changed your hair.” He says, apropos to nothing, leans in and nips at her bottom lip. “It suits you, Mrs Carson.”

  
She smiles against his mouth, steadies her cup in her lap and presses up towards him, a gentle pressure to bring her lips and his firmly together.

  
“I’m bored.” She jerks back, tea spilling over her hand as Lizzie crawls up onto the settee to squeeze between them. Elsie finds herself shifting over without giving it any thought, Charles’s hand falling from her shoulder. 

  
“Can you tell me a story Uncle Carson?”

  
Lizzie smiles up at her uncle and Elsie sees the moment he gives in; his shoulders slumping and a dreadfully fond look settling into his eyes. “Of course I can, Elizabeth.” He pauses and takes a deep breath, his voice deeper when he continues. “In a big house in a little village lived a wealthy family with three daughters. But downstairs, where the servants lived, was a very special little girl.”

  
“Called ‘Lizbeth!”

  
Charles nods, reaches over to stroke Lizzie’s hair away from her forehead.  "Called Elizabeth.“

  
Elsie picks up her notebook, swaps her cup for her pen. Lizzie leans into her side as Charles continues his tale and even with the guests arriving tomorrow and the deliveries she’ll have to be up early for. Even with her evening disturbed once again; she feels content, happy. She looks up and catches Charles’s eye. Yes, she thinks, very definitely happy.

——

  
**iii.**

  
He finds her bent over the laundry, the hot iron in her hand. 

  
A pile of already smoothed sheets is stacked up by the door and he leans against the frame to watch her, the old song coming to mind again.

  
He waits until she has placed the iron down, started folding the sheet, before beginning to sing.

  
_"Dashing away with the smoothing iron, she stole my heart away.”_

  
His wife jumps, one hand going to her chest as she turns. Pointing a finger at him, she waggles it threateningly. “You just scared five years off me, Mr Carson.”

  
He laughs, pushing away from the door frame and moving towards her. “I hope not, Mrs Carson.” He says when he is within reach. “I have plans for those five years.”

  
“Oh, you do? And I have no say, I suppose?”

  
He reaches out and clasps her by the waist, tugs her close. “No, I’m afraid you do not. You see, all your years belong to me now, you promised them to me in front of God and our friends and family.”

  
She laughs, brings her soft hands up to his face and lays her palms against his cheeks. “I don’t think that’s quite what was meant." 

  
His own hands rise to her neck, up higher to cup the back of her head, his fingers tangling into the strands that have fallen loose from the pins while she worked. He scrunches up his face in thought, kisses the thumb that brushes across his bottom lip. "No, no. I’m sure that it was." 

  
Tilting her head, he smiles at her. "The rest of your life and mine, Mrs Carson; they belong to me.”

  
“I suppose there are worse fates I could have fallen to, Mr Carson.” She says, breath whisking across his cheek and he closes the little space between them, brings their lips together. 

  
She tastes of lemon and butter and he knows that she has been at the tarts again; her own weakness.

  
Her hands slip into his hair, tug a little as her fingers curl. It has been too long since he held her like this, tasted her. They are so busy now with the guest house, and poor Elizabeth has been taking time adjusting to the change; it has been a while since they have found themselves alone.

  
“Charles if you don’t stop soon, I’m afraid I won’t let you.”

  
He groans at the words, whispered into his ear as she turns her face away, he nuzzles into her neck and lets a hand slide down to the small of her back, push her closer so that he can feel the full length of her pressed up against him.

  
“Then don’t.” He manages, searches out her mouth again and crashes his lips to hers, swallows her gasp.

  
“Uncle Carson? Uncle Carson? Have you seen Molly?”

  
He groans again, this time not at all from pleasure as Elsie pushes him away seconds before their girl steps into the room.

  
“She’s probably where you left her, Lizzie, come along, let’s go see if we can find her.”

  
Elsie holds out her hand for Elizabeth and Charles is careful to keep his body angled away, most of him hidden by the table.

  
“But Uncle Carson…”

  
“Uncle Carson is busy, darling, now come on, I’m sure we can find your dolly ourselves. Unless she’s climbed up to the top of the cupboards, then we might need your Uncle’s assistance.”

  
He leans against the table as his girls leave the room, tries to steady his breathing.

  
“Molly can’t climb cupboards.” He hears Elizabeth insist.

  
“She can’t?”

  
“No, she’s scared of high places.”

  
Elsie’s laugh is the last he hears before the door upstairs closes and cuts him off from them.

  
Elbows against the table he drops his head into his hands. He loves the girl, he does, but Elizabeth has truly terrible timing.

——

  
**iv.**

  
“Berry.”

  
“Yes, love?”

  
“Are Aunt Elsie and Uncle Carson kissing?”

  
“Oh, um, well I’m sure, I mean they might– Why d'you ask Lizzie?”

  
“Because they keep sitting close together.”

  
“Right.”

  
“And they hold hands like Aunt Elsie makes me when we cross the road, but they’re inside.”

  
“I see.”

  
“And Uncle Carson hugs her like he does me but Aunt Elsie’s bigger than me so she has to stand up.”

  
“I’ll bet she does.”

  
“And they _keep kissing_!”

  
…

  
“Why’re you laughing Berry?”

  
“Oh I’m sorry love, it’s nothing. Don’t worry. Just something I’ll talk to your Uncle about. Don’t you like when they kiss? I thought you wanted them to be together?”

  
“Sybbie said that’s how babies are made. She said Lady Mary kissed a boy and then George came. I don’t want Aunt Elsie and Uncle Carson to get a George.”

  
“Oh, you sweet thing. I don’t think you have to worry about that.”

  
“But they kiss.”

  
“Er, ahem, _yes_ but well, they don’t want; yes, that’s it! They have you Lizzie, they don’t want a George.”

  
“Oh.”

  
“There that’s cheered you right up. So you’ll stop interrupting them now, will you?”

  
“Mmm yes. I keep missing so many tea parties!”

  
“Oh, love. I’m sure you do.”

—–

  
**v.**

  
“It was good of Mrs Patmore to take Lizzie." 

  
"Elsie Carson, do not _ever_ mention Mrs Patmore in this bed again.”

  
She laughs at his grumble, turns her face into his chest to smother it. “Sorry.”

  
His fingers curl at her side, tickle gently so that she cannot help but to wiggle a little. Usually, through dress, shift and corset she cannot feel it, but bare like this and her skin still more sensitive to his touch, she feels everything so much stronger. “You’re not sorry at all, Mrs Carson. But yes, I am glad _that woman_ took her for the night.”

  
Sliding a leg over his, she settles closer to him, her arm across his chest, fingers carding through the short hairs at his temple. Even now, the black and grey strands wild where her fingers have done away with much of the pomade, he still looks so distinguished.

  
Some days she cannot believe she gets to see him this way.

  
“I do feel bad, shipping her off just so that we can…well.” She feels her cheeks heat with a blush, wonders if he can too, where the left is pressed against him.

  
His hand rubs along her hip, up and down soothingly. “You know she loves spending time with Mrs– _that woman_ , although Lord knows why.”

  
She smacks him, a light tap against his shoulder. “Don’t be mean, she’s doing us a great favour tonight. Perhaps she’ll get to the bottom of it. We’ve been here three months now, Lizzie can’t still be adjusting. There has to be something more to it.”

  
He stiffens beneath her and she braces herself; she is not going to like this, she can tell. “Perhaps, perhaps she was not as happy about us, about  _me_ as we thought.”

  
Pushing up from the bed, she leans on one hand and looks at him. “Don’t be absurd. She adores you. You’re her Uncle-Mister Carson. That hasn’t changed, no matter that she might have dropped the mister now. No, she was fine at first, remember? Something must have happened. Or someone said something to her.”

  
She reaches out and cups his cheek. “She loves you, Charles and she was so happy when we told her. And she told _me_ , before we left for the church that she could say you were her real Uncle now. She _thanked_ me for marrying you." 

  
Charles smiles, his eyes soft and glistening in the candle light. "Oh.”

  
“Yes, 'oh’. So no more of this nonsense.” She settles back down on his chest and he holds her close, squeezes her to him.

  
“Yes, of course. No more.”

  
She smiles against his skin. Beryl will find out the truth, she has no doubt. Whether the cook will pass the information on to them without a good deal of teasing, well, that is another matter entirely.

  
She feels Charles tense again beneath her and almost sighs. What can he be working himself up about now? But his hand slips around to her stomach, the other pushing at her shoulder to tip her onto her back. She looks up as he looms over her, eyes pitch black as he stares down at her. “Something you wanted, Mr Carson?”

  
“Well, we are alone, Mrs Carson. I think we’d best make the most of it while we can.”

  
She laughs, pulls him down to her.

  
They kiss, once, twice, so many more times as the candle burns down and they move together in the dim light; uninterrupted.

**_End._ **


End file.
